This tiny school district has a chaplain, public prayers and a lesson for Texas
LOUISE — By the time school counselor April Cubriel huddled around a small table with a pair of eighth graders on a recent Monday afternoon, she had a good sense of what was on kids' minds at the Louise Independent School District, a 519-student district rooted in a Gulf Coast rice farming town unmarred by traffic lights.
The high schoolers hoped for safe travels to the Houston Rodeo and a girls' powerlifting competition. The elementary crowd worried about a few bruising falls from the monkey bars. And everyone, it seemed, had test anxiety.
But at the junior high, eighth graders Ava Tiller and Bristol Kulcak said, the problem was the drama, the shards of gossip and petty half-truths that splintered friendships. Cubriel nodded knowingly.
Then she said something you don't hear from public school counselors.
'How can you turn that into a positive with a prayer?' Cubriel asked the girls as they fidgeted with their pencils, staring at the blank page where a plea to a higher power should be. 'Remember, when you're praying, you're asking God to help us to do better.'
Prayer? In public schools? Cubriel might as well wear a button that says: 'It's OK. I'm a chaplain.'
In a state that lets religious chaplains do the work of trained school counselors, Cubriel is that rare creature who is both. She has a master's degree in counseling and 24 years in public schools — first as a teacher and instructional coach, then the last 7 years as a counselor. Last year she earned her chaplain certification with the encouragement of the Louise school board, which saw a benefit in having that type of in-house support in the event of a tragedy. The district even paid for her certification.
Cubriel, who is Baptist, is one of the few chaplains on any Texas school district's payroll since the Legislature passed the school chaplains bill in 2023.
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Critics of the school chaplain bill rightly objected to the notion that lightly trained chaplains, no matter how sincere, could replace the mental health expertise of licensed counselors. Cubriel showed the measure could work another way: A licensed counselor could expand her toolkit with chaplain training, to provide spiritual support to those who want it.
'It is a small community, but we have families that are going through just as many things as you would in a big city,' said Cubriel, noting three school families have lost a parent in the past year, while two other fathers suffered debilitating work injuries. 'Just being able to talk about their faith and pray with them and just be there to support them, that's really how I've used this (chaplain) certification.'
What did your district decide?
But it's no surprise that the Louise district, situated halfway between Houston and Corpus Christi, took a bold approach when the Legislature put out the welcome mat for school chaplains. As Texas lawmakers once again press for a greater religious presence in public schools — with bills this session to put the Ten Commandments into classrooms and provide dedicated prayer time for students and teachers — Louise ISD is practically there.
Take prayer in school.
The Louise district has included student-led prayers with the daily announcements for years, long before Cubriel became a chaplain. The elementary students offer their own prayers at the morning assembly in the cafeteria. The junior high and high school students read prayers they've written over the public address system, after the U.S. and Texas pledges.
"Dear Heavenly Father, I pray for the health and protection of all students and staff," 11th grader Kennedy Long-Brown said on a recent Monday. "I pray you keep us protected with all the sickness going around. I pray everyone is safe on their way to their game. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen."
As chaplain, Cubriel helps the young volunteers reflect on what they want to say.
'At their sports events, they had students leading prayers before games. When our students travel, the coaches usually do a prayer before they leave,' Cubriel told me. 'This is a very conservative area, and that is very important to them. And it really wasn't a question of, 'Are we going to do (school prayers)?' It was, 'This is what we do. Come on in.''
Dale Carpenter, a constitutional law expert at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, told me the district is 'flirting with an unconstitutional practice,' given Supreme Court rulings dating back to the 1960s finding that public schools cannot lead students in prayer.
Even student-led activities have limits: In the 2000 case Santa Fe ISD v. Doe, the court found that student-led prayers before high school football games still amounted to an improper government endorsement of religion, as the school district provided the platform and the loudspeakers for the invocation.
But conservatives are hoping today's Supreme Court, having affirmed a Washington football coach's right to silently pray at the 50-yard-line, will be even more permissive the next time a school prayer case comes its way. In the meantime, Carpenter suspects prayer in school 'is quietly going on all around the country, in little school districts where nobody's there to object.'
'It takes a lot for students and their parents to speak up,' Carpenter noted. Especially in a small town.
Louise school Superintendent Richard Wright knows school prayer is controversial, but he's not exactly worried about state officials stepping in. "I mean, they're putting the Ten Commandments in school," he told me. "That pretty much says everything."
And while Wright said prayer would be problematic for more diverse school districts, he said it's woven into the cultural fabric in Louise, where he estimates 85% to 90% of the families attend church.
'We're very homogeneous in terms of our Christianity," said Wright, who became superintendent this school year. "So the community embraces that, and it's a positive thing.'
In his view, that's the test that matters: What the community wants. If, for example, a new plant came to town and drew a bunch of new families with different backgrounds, Wright said the district would reevaluate whether its practices were accepted or causing division. But he said it should be up to the local school board to decide.
'We're in a time these days where everybody wants to force their opinions and their values on other people,' Wright said. 'Let Louise ISD govern itself, have our own set of values, our own set of guiding principles that are good for us.'
Of course, he saw the irony. With the 2023 school chaplain bill, the Legislature required every school district in Texas to vote on a policy. With the Ten Commandments bill this session, such classroom displays would become mandatory.
Religion should never be legislated. Yet lawmakers have found it makes for irresistible politics.
None of which interests Cubriel. As a counselor, and now in her added duties as a chaplain, she finds joy in helping students find their way. She said she doesn't get into any religious doctrine. She just speaks of God's love and support with those who believe in those things, too.
Cubriel's guiding question for those writing the school prayers — 'What do you think your classmates need help with?' — is about getting people 'to think outside of themselves,' she said.
Which, for all our differences, should be a welcome lesson anywhere we can find it.
Grumet is the Statesman's Editorial Page Editor. Her column contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com, or via X or Bluesky at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/opinion/columns.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Louise ISD shows chaplains as counselor is possible in Texas | Opinion
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